We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Thursday, April 18. 2013

A 'simulation', or sim, is a computer game that mimics every aspect of real life. Silent Hunter 4 places you inside a U.S. attack submarine smack-dab in the middle of World War II. Everything about the sub (and its enemies) is true to reality; the time it takes to dive, to surface, to get up to speed, to stop, the turning radius, torpedo speeds, reloading time; everything.

Luckily, there's a speed-up option so you don't actually have to sit there staring at the computer screen for eight days while you cross the Pacific Ocean. You'll see the speed-up used in a few places in the following video. It's to note that this video is mostly comprised of scenes taken directly from the game, most using the 'external camera' view. Click on the little symbol on the player's tool bar and watch it in full-screen mode.

But first, John Milton's 'On Time'.

Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race,Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,

Which is no more then what is false and vain,And merely mortal dross;So little is our loss,So little is thy gain.

For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb'd,And, last of all, thy greedy self consum'd,Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss,With an individual kiss.

And Joy shall overtake us as a flood,When everything that is sincerely goodAnd perfectly divine,With Truth, and Peace, and LoveShall ever shineAbout the supreme throne.

Un-friggin-believeable. I knew the soldier and aviation sims had gotten pretty realistic, but had no idea it had moved to the sea. I went to the article, glanced over the pics, and it's downloading as I type. Shall report back when I get to it this weekend, and much thanks for the post.

I agree with John, that video was incredible. How do they get all the "External Camera" views? Can you actually watch the action as it's taking place from outside the sub?

Anyway, I'll order it tonight when I get home. I have a roomie whose birthday is tomorrow and we have a $10 limit on presents, so this'll be perfect. I'll have to install it on my own machine first, of course, just to make sure I've bought him a quality gift. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

(five minutes later)

I just spent some time with the manual. Loved the letter from the insurance company. :-)

Bobolink - Yep, you can fire off a salvo and go to External Camera mode and watch those babies heading toward their target. They're still heading away, though, because you're using the sub's external view.

Hit the '>' key again and now you're using the enemy's external view, watching the torps coming toward you.

Fun for the whole family!

The 'Replay' camera is even better, because it's independent of any one ship so you can go all over hell and gone. Watching the desperate enemy sailors cling to the flattop's deck as it slowly starts to roll over is just hilarious.

No, but you can sink the Kobayashi Maru in Duke Nukem -- does that count?

While the standard game is 'Career' mode, which just slaps you out there, it also has a handful of specific scenarios, like the Yamato has been spotted in your area and she's all yours. There are a couple of battleship scenarios, a couple of flattop scenarios, and a couple of "massive convoy spotted" routines. It has a another section that slaps you right in the middle of famous battles, like Coral Sea. All in all, an amazing package.

Gah! My husband has been playing this off and on for years (Maybe not this version) I can't think of the number of nights I've woken up hearing "crossing thermal layer" or the all quarters alarm. It is a great review of history though and the graphics are beautiful. They do water well.

Assuming it's the same version, mention to hubby that I have a file in my article that'll change every voice in the game to the 'whispered' voice they use when in Silent Running mode, plus I lowered the loud, obnoxious "diving" alarm and a few others.

I loved it with the Uboat version, but it began to suck as the war progressed. Its a marvel they had willing sailors go out into the Atlantic, to meet certain death... without armed guards to prod them there.

Ya know, you just don't see a lot of John Milton in the right-wing blogosphere these days.

He was one of my favorites in college, along with Percy Bysshe. I loved this poem.

And if someone had told me it was going to be narrated over a war video, I would have been seriously shocked, even outraged.

But what they did was just magnificent, with some of the worst of the horror coming just as the words 'joy' and 'good' were being spoken, the whole thing somehow eliciting how dangerous this was and what good men will go through to defend a free people. Throw in the music and that was honestly one of the finest, most haunting pieces I've ever seen. How can I save it on my own computer?

I've seen a fair amount of game intros, including war sims, but what these guys did stands alone. Not only because of bringing Milton into the picture, but, as you implied, it was definitely synced to the video. The first interior shot of the damaged submarine takes place right as he speaks the word flood.

To save it to the computer (and play it) takes a couple of steps. Saving it depends upon which browser you're using, and you'll probably need to install a 'codec pack' to play it because it's in a streaming format (FLV) that Windows doesn't recognize by default. Go to the very bottom of this page for the info & links.

And thanks for the nice comment. I'm glad you saw what I saw in this moving piece.

Interesting factoid about radar. While the Naval Research Laboratory and MIT's engineering department likes to think that RADAR was their personal invention, it really wasn't.

The effect of disrupting signals was first observed in the late 19th century by Heinrich Hertz when he noticed that radio waves could be reflected from nearby objects. He never carried through with these experiments though. Then a Russian physicist named Alexander Popov observed a similar phenomena about ten years after Hertz (1896) while studying lighting strikes with a device called a coherer tube. Popov combined the coherer tube with a spark gap transmitter during experiments in ship-to-ship communication when he noticed that there was an "interference beat" (very similar to the zero beat effect in CW (continuous wave) radio communications) effect and posited that this could be useful in detecting ships at a distance from shore. That wasn't followed up on either until later.

In 1905, a German inventor named Christian Hülsmeyer built on Popov's work creating a device called a Telemobiloscope which could detect distant object, but could not provide any type of ranging in terms of distance - only direction.

Subsequently, Tesla (who else) came up with a system that could both determine direction and distance. Almost all of the WWI combatants were working on RADAR, but it was the British that really developed the system to it's early full potential, not MIT or the NRL.

This is not to denigrate the contributions of MIT's Radiation Laboratory and a guy named Alfred Lee Loomis who came up with the pulsed phase technique (also sometimes called monopulse) - that was clearly a huge advance in the capability of RADAR which even the British had to admit was better than theirs.

I should also add that Hiram Percy Maxim (son of Hiram Spencer Maxim of Maxim Machine Gun fame) - inventor of the hand gun silencer and automobile muffler, in his work with radio communications also contributed to the theory of how radar works, but it was more for use in establishing a series of radio relay stations across the United States. Hiram Percy Maxim was the founder of the American Radio Relay League which is the organization for Amateur Radio Operators.

Interesting info. Loomis was highlighted in the DVD I had. The real point it made is that our radar was so much better than the Japs' near the end of the war that it made a serious difference. If you can see the other guy before he can see you, that counts.

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